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Pocket Projector

Om Malik points to a Technology Review article on how miniprojectors could be the antidote to handheld devices shrinking screens: “Chances are you cant remember the last time you hauled a projector out of the attic to look at slides or movies. But, says Ramesh Raskar, you may soon carry one with you everywhere you go. Raskar, a research scientist at Cambridge, MAs Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, sees tiny projectors as the solution to one of the fundamental problems with our ever shrinking cell phones, PDAs, digital cameras, and other portable devices. The gizmos carry more and more of our data, but they are running out of room to display it to us. Build a tiny projector into each of those devices, though, and the world becomes your display. Raskars team has developed hardware and software that can project digital images onto whatever surface is handythe wall, say, or a desktopand make them look good even if the impromptu screen isnt nice and smooth. And once you buy into this notion that people would like to have this kind of an attachment, he asks, what will they do beyond just looking at those images?”